


The End (and the Beginning)

by Morgane (smilla840)



Series: New Beginnings [1]
Category: 24
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ignores pretty much everything that happened after season 5, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilla840/pseuds/Morgane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Day 5, the last ramifications of the conspiracy are revealed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End (and the Beginning)

**Author's Note:**

> Written after season 5 because I refused to believe Tony was dead. Turned out I ended up being right. Go me, I guess? AU.

When Tony woke up, it was dark and cold and he hurt all over. For a few seconds he floated, his mind a careful blank, until it all came flooding back to him and he wanted to scream. Michelle was dead. She was _dead_. He would never see her again, would never touch her again, would never make her smile. All he remembered of her now was holding her bloody form in his arms. Had she been dead already then? Could he have saved her, had he dragged her away from the car, from the second explosion?

God, she was really dead, and he wasn’t. 

There his mind came to a stop. He should be dead too, shouldn’t he? And as far as he could tell, he wasn’t. Unless this was hell. Possible. But unlikely. 

Trying to make sense of it all, he gathered his memories. He had tried to kill Henderson, that much he knew, but he hadn’t been able to go through with it, and it had pathetically backfired.

He remembered Jack too, holding him, and he had sounded both pleading and terrified. So unlike Jack. Hadn’t he known what he had put in that syringe already, he would have known then that he was going to die. Because Jack never begged.

So what had happened? 

And more importantly, where was he? Where was Jack? Was he okay? His mind whirled with panic, his thoughts a blur – it was his fault Henderson had escaped, what if he had still been there, waiting for Jack? What if he killed Jack? He had to do something! 

Struggling to get up, Tony stumbled towards what he hoped was the door. He met the wall instead and carefully made his way around the room. His movements were stifled and cautious because even breathing hurt and he couldn’t see a thing. But his resolve was firm and he _would_ warn Jack. No matter what. 

Finally he came across what he figured was the door and tried the handle. It was probably a testament to his life that he wasn’t even surprised when it refused to open. In frustration he slammed his hand against the wall, welcoming the sharp pain that reverberated through his arm.

Exhausted, he slid down to the floor, panting, and tried to get a hold of himself. He had to calm down, focus, think things through, except he couldn’t. His mind kept going round and round in circles. Michelle was dead, Jack might be dead, for all he knew the entire population of LA could be dead too, although right now it didn’t seem important. Because he had just lost Michelle and no way was he losing Jack too. 

Tony had not so long ago come to realize that there were two people that really mattered to him. Two persons he was miserable without, two persons he would kill for and die for. Ironic, wasn’t it, that he had failed even in that?

Michelle was one, of course. His Michelle. God, how he loved her. She was dead now, and his mind shied away from the fact, not wanting to ponder what that meant too much for now.

The second had come as a bit of a surprise to Tony, although in retrospect it probably shouldn’t have. After Jack’s ‘death’, he had found himself looking next to him at times, only to realize there was no one there, or picking up his phone only to remember he couldn’t call him. It hadn’t been anything like the last time they had been apart, after Tony had been pardoned. No it hadn’t been the same, because back then, he could have called Jack had he wanted to. He hadn’t, because he had been a mess and he hadn’t wanted him to see him like that. Which might have been his first clue.

Once, after he had snapped at Michelle one time too many, she had sat him down and asked him what was wrong. And he had had to admit to both of them that he missed Jack more than he had thought possible. Michelle knew already, of course, and she had smiled knowingly and kissed him, telling him it was okay and things would work out. He had never loved her more.

She had been wrong though. Things definitely had _not_ worked out. And what if it was too late already? What time was it? What day? Were they both … dead? No, Jack always got himself out of the trickiest situations. He could take care of himself. He was fine.

Clinging to that hope, he faded out of consciousness again.

 

When he woke up he was back on the cot and – he noticed as he tried to roll over – tied up. Perfect. He couldn’t even move around now, try to plan his escape. No such luck. He would have to rely on… His mind drew a blank. No. He wouldn’t be able to rely on Jack to get him out of this, because Jack thought he was dead. That meant no rescue for him, unless he rescued himself. Which was hard to contemplate right now.

On the bright side, the pain in his body had subsided to a dull throb, apart from the parts still burning from the explosion. Had they drugged him? How much time had passed since the last time he had been awake? 

He drifted, his mind buzzing with questions without answers, as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him.

Let’s start with what he knew. Unfortunately, the list was quite short. Terrorists were wrecking havoc in LA. Henderson was involved and had most likely escaped after Tony’s botched attempt to kill him. Unless they had stopped him. Which he had no way of knowing. Finally, Tony himself had been taken from CTU under the cover of being dead. At least he thought so. 

But to what aim? Who were his captors? Try as he may, his mind couldn’t come up with a satisfying answer. The obvious choice was the terrorists themselves. After all, they had already tried to kill him once today. But why keep him captive then? Why not simply kill him? And how could they have had access to his ‘body’?

His thoughts were interrupted by the scrap of metal against metal and the door to his cell opened. Bright light lit up the room and he had to close his eyes against the flare.

“What do you want? Who are you?” He asked, but got no answer from whoever was in the room with him. 

The man – doctor? – checked the cuts on his face, cleaning them and redressing them while Tony tried not to jerk away. Which became even harder when he was unceremoniously undressed to deal with the burns. The other man never said a word, going clinically through his task. 

Then he left, and Tony found himself alone with his thoughts again.

 

With nothing else to do but think, he quickly found himself confronted with Michelle’s death. He wanted to scream and cry, but he could only assume there was surveillance in the room and he wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. He only allowed himself a few silent tears at night, his body tight with the suppressed urge to sob.

As days passed and he no longer required a doctor’s attention, the restraints disappeared and he gained light – yellowish during the day, with a more greenish taint at what he figured was night. He was fed thrice a day, and probably worked out more than he had in the past couple of years. He was bored, and there wasn’t anything else to do. At night, he fell on his cot with vaguely aching muscles and the knowledge that if an opportunity to escape presented itself, he would be ready. 

 

Soon, it felt like he had been there forever – though it was probably closer to a few weeks. His wounds healed, most of them becoming just another set of scars on his body. He had long ago given up trying to figure why he was here, concentrating getting out of here instead. It kept him focused and mildly angry, which he figured couldn’t hurt. At least, it kept him from going crazy: after his stay in prison he had come to hate closed spaces. So he bid his time. And remembered.

 

Meanwhile the outside world was still dealing with the post-Logan mess. Despite his arrest, the whole business had been rather hushed up – after all, it wouldn’t do to have a President of the United States involved with terrorists. Therefore it fell to a selected few to shift through the decisions he had made as head of state, as well as his personal things to make sure no incriminating evidence was left behind, or that nothing he had done using his presidential status would come back and bite them in the ass later.

It would turn out to be far from the truth.

One of those unfortunate enough to have inherited that task was Mike Novick. He had been going through a stack of papers found in Logan’s briefcase when something caught his eye. A name.

Tony Almeida.

Now, that might not have been significant in itself – after all, Almeida had been closely involved in the ‘events’ that had occurred in LA two months ago before he had lost his life – but it was enough for him to pay closer attention.

What he found had him reaching for his phone. Except he wasn’t calling Jack Bauer. It had been three weeks since the man had come home from China, and it had taken a great deal of diplomatic talks to get him back. In fact, Mike wasn’t sure he was very sane right now. He had nothing but the highest respect for the man, but he was too closely involved and couldn’t be controlled. Which was one of his greatest strengths in time of duress, but this… was too sensitive not to be handled carefully. It was just a memo, after all. It might prove to be nothing. No, he had to get confirmation first.

So instead, he called CTU and let Buchanan know he was on his way.

 

When Bill Buchanan got the call from Novick, he wondered what it was that had disturbed the man so much. While it wasn’t unusual for him to call, it certainly was for him to come to CTU. It had to be important and rather sensitive. He hoped the Chinese weren’t trying to get Jack back. It was already more than likely that Jack would have to go back into hiding pretty soon, just to be safe, but he had hoped he would have more time. The man had gone through hell in the past two months, first with the deaths of his friends and everything else that had happened that day. 

And then China. Bill didn’t know the specifics of what had happened there, but he could guess. Jack had come back bruised and on edge, and from what Bill had heard, he hadn’t wanted to see either Kim or Audrey. Just Chloe. They had gone to Tony’s and Michelle’s graves together, and Bill hadn’t been brave enough to tell him Tony’s was empty.

When Mike finally made it to CTU he looked a little frazzled and immediately asked if they could talk in private. The trip to his office had never seemed longer.

“What’s going on Mike?” he asked when they finally got there.

“I found something in President Logan’s belongings. I thought you should see it.”

He handed Bill the memo he had retrieved. It was fairly short, only two lines addressed to the former President from a Secret Service covert team. It should have been destroyed as soon as it had been read but the events of the day had been hectic and Logan had probably shoved it in a corner to get back at it later.

It was simple and to the point.

_‘Almeida recovered and secured. Awaiting further instruction.’_

At a loss for words, Bill looked at Mike.

“Tell me I’m reading this wrong Mike.”

Mike raised an eyebrow instead. “I don’t know Bill. What happened to Almeida’s body?”

Bill blanched. “There was a mix-up in the paperwork. Tony was incinerated, like the other members of CTU who died because of the Sentox.”

“So there is no body.” Mike said wryly. “Any way Almeida could be alive?”

“Yesterday I would have said no but right now…”

“Right. What do we know? Almeida was injected with a lethal dose of sodium pentothal. Where is the doctor who pronounced him?”

Bill typed a few keys in his computer and came up with a name. “Dr. Michael Frost. He died in a car crash-” Bill swallowed hard. “- the next day.”

“Of course he did,” Mike said wryly. Why wasn’t he surprised? “What about the injection. Could he have survived that?”

Bill shook his head. “I don’t know Mike. I’m no doctor, but Tony had intended to kill Henderson with it. He must have known what he was doing.”

“Call medical.”

Bill was already dialling. “Dr. Presson? Bill Buchanan. I have a question for you. Hypothetically if someone was injected with a lethal dose of sodium pentothal, what would happen?”

Bill listened to the doctor talking about respiratory depression and shock, coma and death, and when he hung up, he had his answer. Looking rather grim, he turned back towards Novick.

“A lethal injection causes coma and death, within 45 minutes. It can be manageable, through ventilation and epinephrine and other drugs to deal with the shock. It would still be touch and go though, but without any underlying conditions, it can be curable. It would all depend on the dosage, of course.”

There was silence in the room while both men tried to digest the news. Then Bill shook his head.

“Are we really saying our former President kidnapped Tony Almeida, passing him off as dead, and is now holding him captive in some unknown location? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t think he planned it,” Mike said, thoughtful. “I would say Almeida’s ‘death’ was an opportunity that presented itself and President Logan saw it for what it was. Probably had informers within CTU too. As to why he did it… well, I think we both know the answer to that one.”

Bill nodded. “But where is he then? Logan isn’t President anymore. Why hasn’t Tony been released?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find out.”

 

Their first step was to enrol Chloe O’Brian’s help. They would need to ferret around the system to find traces of Tony, and she was the best for the job. At the news, she looked at them with wide eyes, and immediately asked: “What about Jack? Do we tell him? I think we should tell him.”

Buchanan shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we know more.”

Chloe had reluctantly agreed and settled back in front of her computer screen, already scanning for information.

 

After everything had been put into motions, Novick went back to DC where he talked to Aaron Pierce. As Head of the Secret Service under Logan, he could – though Mike thought it was unlikely – have had intel as to what had happened. Predicatively, he hadn’t, Logan having gone over his head when sending the team. He would ask though, discreetly, and might come up with something. They were his men, after all. And while he had been on leave for the past two months, he would find out who was on assignment he hadn’t authorized. 

Things started to move fast. Pierce got them the names and Chloe tracked them down through the system. They still didn’t know where Tony was, but he definitely _was_ somewhere. So they went to Logan.

It was surprisingly easy to get the location out of him – an unknown safe-house off in the desert – once they presented him with the threat of Jack Bauer, pissed off and without camera.

Then it was time to tell Jack. 

Buchanan asked him to come to CTU and he and Chloe met him in the conference room. Chloe was fidgety and nervous, while Jack looked utterly blank. There was no emotions on his face, nothing that would indicate he was even curious as to the reason he was there.

“Jack, I have some news,” Bill started, only to be interrupted by Chloe who blurted out, “It’s Tony, Jack, he’s alive.”

Bill shot her an annoyed look but the sound of a chair hitting the ground re-directed his attention towards Bauer. Gone was the emotionless mask. In his stead was a whirl of feelings, anger and grief and guilt predominant.

“What are you talking about! Tony is dead, he died in my arms. Don’t you think I know that? I talked him out of killing Henderson, and that bastard killed him. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Jack,” Chloe pleaded. “he didn’t! He was in a coma and we all thought he was dead, and then that asshole Logan snatched him and we all believed he had been incinerated and didn’t ask questions, but then Novick found a memo and now we know what really happened and…”

It probably wasn’t the most intelligible summary but it got to Jack. It didn’t calm him down though. If anything, his agitation seemed to increase.

“Where is he?” he asked feverishly. “Where is Tony? I’ve got to see him.”

“We were about to go and retrieve him. I just thought you might want to join us.”

Jack laughed – and he sounded a little insane in Bill’s ears. “Are you crazy? Of course I want to go!”

“I’ll brief Curtis, and then you can go. Oh, and Jack? Don’t go around shooting all the men from Secret Service. They were just doing their job.”

After a briefing with Curtis, who took the news with much philosophy – after all, Tony wasn’t the first to come back from the dead – during which Jack stuck around and finally got the whole story, they were set to go.

It was three hours away and Jack was practically vibrating with anticipation the whole way, torn between hope – Tony was alive, Tony was _alive_ – and doubt – Tony _had_ been alive at some point, what if they had gotten rid of him?

The action itself was rather anti-climatic. The others surrendered as soon as the men from CTU identified themselves. They would find out later that they had had no contact with the rest of the world since they had gotten the order to lay low until further notice. That further notice had never come, and neither had the news that Logan had been arrested.

But at that moment, Jack didn’t really care. He got the location of Tony’s cell, along with the key, and took off running. 

“Tony?” he called out as he came to an abrupt stop in front of the door, his fingers fumbling a little with the key.

“Jack?? Is that you?”

And then the key was finally turning and Jack threw the door open, and – Oh God, thank you – Tony came stumbling out, blinking a little at the daylight. He didn’t have much time to adjust though, as Jack steadied him and pulled him into a crushing embrace.

They both just held on to each other, Jack in a desperate attempt to erase to memory of the last time he had seen Tony – dead, no, not dead, alive, very much alive – and Tony simply soaking in the comforting presence and human contact, listening to Jack babbling nonsense in his ear. Which somehow felt strangely familiar.

When they finally pulled apart – a little reluctantly though neither would have admitted it – they examined each other critically.

“You look like shit Jack,” Tony informed him and if the laugh he got in answer was a little watery, neither man commented on it.

“Thanks. You know I try my best.”

“Yeah, yeah. We can’t all have an innate sense of style.” Tony quipped, and it felt good to fall back on the familiar banter. It had been close to … what? Three years now? Since before Tony had been sent to prison, in any case. After that… well, there had never been time.

“So what happened? Did you catch Henderson? And what about the gas? Fuck Jack, what the hell happened?”

Jack shook his head at the barrage of questions and smiled, his first genuine smile in two months.

“Come on, I’ll explain in the car.”

And it did take the three hours of the drive back to explain everything, and then some. They ended up in CTU’s conference room, familiar ground which now made both men uneasy. People kept staring at Tony and he felt very uncomfortable, unconsciously drifting closer to Jack.

“I still don’t understand why they wanted me.” Tony wondered aloud, sitting down after a brief medical that had declared him healthier than the last time he had been there. They were alone now, with Bill and Chloe.

At his question, Jack looked vaguely guilty and stared at the table before him. It was Buchanan who tackled the answer.

“President Logan wanted something over Jack. A way to make him more manageable. He saw your death as the perfect opportunity. Since you were legally dead, he could do as he pleased. You no longer existed.”

Tony didn’t look convinced – after all, anyone who knew Jack knew he definitely could _not_ be controlled – but Jack looked increasingly guilty so he dropped it.

“So what happens now?” he asked instead.

“Well, I’m afraid I’ve some bad news. Jack, the Chinese are growing restless again. We fear they might go back on the agreement. It would…”

“Wait a minute.” Tony interrupted. “The Chinese? Jack, what’s going on?”

“The Chinese government kidnapped Jack immediately after he had been released from our custody. We only got him back three weeks ago.” Buchanan supplied the information, and Tony glared at Jack, letting him know he wasn’t impressed with him skipping over the subject.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go into hiding again Jack. At least for the time being.”

Jack didn’t say anything, just nodded and glanced briefly at Tony before looking away. He looked resigned about it, and Tony didn’t like that expression on his face. What on earth had they done to him? Whatever it was, it was bad. 

“I’m going with you.” Tony said decisively.

Jack stared at him in surprise, warmth unexpectedly infusing his body. He had to protest though. “Tony, you can’t. You can still have a life here and I…”

“No Jack, I don’t. Michelle…” There, Tony’s voice wavered a little but he plunged on. “Michelle is dead. There is nothing for me here anymore. I’m going with you, and that’s final.”

Bill cleared his throat. “Very well. You know what to do.”

They nodded. Chloe would set up false identities for them, so perfectly that no one would ever question them. They would clean their bank account and walk around with a stupidly high amount of cash until they found a place to settle down. Jack and Tony would fade away in the mass, until they were sure anyone following had been left far behind.

Tony felt strangely disconnected as he watched everyone around him go about their job. He would deal with everything later. Right now, they had to get Jack to safety.

Distractedly, he watched as Jack called Kim and then Audrey, saying goodbye. It was allowed this time around and Tony was glad for Jack’s sake. Had Michelle still been alive, things would have been different. But she wasn’t, and Tony had accepted it. It had taken time, but after two months of nothing else to think about, he had made his peace with it – or at least as much as he ever would. Oh he was still pretty angry about it but there was nothing to be done. Jack had seen to that, had killed Henderson when Tony himself hadn’t been able to, and for that he was grateful.

Then it was time to leave. The two of them were handed an untraceable phone – just for emergencies – and their new IDs along with their money and clothes. They got on a bus and disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at my livejournal.


End file.
